Notes on listening to Mark’s first video

January 15, 2010

Digital literacies – to be addressed in a second videoThe book – originally inspired by a conference in Chennai in 2007 organized by the Learning Technology SIG of IATEFL (technology in the teaching of English), where MP attended sessions on using wikis, audio recording software &c in ELT, different pedagogical approaches, e.g., social constructivist…. and social issues, e.g,. dangers of social networking sites.

He thought: different conversations were going on but they were unconnected to each other.

After reflecting, he concluded that technology can be viewed through technological, pedagogical and social “lenses”.He later added a fourth lens (sociopolitical): and presented this 4-lens view at World-CALL/Fukuoka in 2008.He added the ecological lens (health, medical, environmental, biological) a little later, and used this 5-lens model to write the book. For each perspective, he considered issues, concerns, pluses, and minuses. He considers the lens model a starting point, a way of pulling together these different conversations, but realizes that it will need to be adjusted in the future.